Graphic Arts and Celtic DNA

Monthly Archives: November 2014

We don’t have any skyscrapers or other soaring architectural gems along the northern California coast to give the viewer that soaring, angular view. However, there are a few other imposing angular views on a more human scale, which compliment the ingenuity and craftsmanship of the rustic ranchers who settled this coastline in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries.

The ranchers needed scattered water supply points, and in the early days there was little or no power generation available along the north coast. Ranchers typically used windmills to lift water from a well to a water storage tank built on top of a high, stiff-legged timber tower. Water flowed by gravity in metal piping, from the tank to watering troughs for cattle, sprinklers for the hay fields, and to the ranch house.

Here are a couple of photos of a redwood water tower, probably built more than 100 years ago. That means it would have had to survive the 1906 earthquake, which demolished a nearby masonry lighthouse. However, a timber structure is more tolerant of seismic motion. Notice the intricate framing design bracing the tower legs. It still looks quite sturdy from the ground, but I didn’t want to climb it to investigate further!

For this Post I’ll go back some years to a pretty major achievement that continued the ‘thread’ of my own personal message stream.

The cottage shown first is on the west coast of Ireland, and is the home of an Uileann Piper friend I had met when he visited San Francisco. I stopped at his home on one of my trips over to order a set of pipes from him.

The view out onto the Atlantic was spectacular. Inside, the lower floor was taken up entirely by his pipes and flute-making workshop:

The piper and I went to the Doolin bar that evening. The bar is a renown site for Irish traditional music and singing, drawing locals and tourists from worldwide. Sometime very late that night the piper asked a young woman tourist he had met there before, and me, if we’d like to explore some of the cave system that twists and winds through the massive limestone, The Burren, which underlies the region. Why sure! We went back to his house to cobble together some wet-gear, and torches (flashlights). We had told no one where we were going. We drove some distance to a tunnel opening which the piper knew of, and entered. At first, you could stand up sideways, but soon we were down in a crouch, and a small stream of water ran in the bottom of the passage. Down and down, sliding on our belly in the water to get beneath overhangs. The only instructions we had from the piper was that we just had to keep turning to our left wherever we encountered a fork. I was ready to turn back after a while of this, but I hated to say anything. Just my luck, the woman was iron-willed. Eventually we reached the grotto that had been the piper’s goal. Here’s two photos of us taking a much needed rest in the grotto: piper and woman in the first, me in the second:

We didn’t stay long, it seemed already hours, and we started back up, me leading this time, and always staying right to retrace our steps. Something was wrong, our passage eventually pinched out. Not to worry! We retraced our steps back down until we were confident of recognizing features observed on the way down, then we started back up. This time I tried to be extra careful and called back the features to the piper as we wound our way upward. Pretty soon the headroom disappeared. There seemed only a sand and gravel mound on the floor with water flowing across it. First I, then the piper, tried to claw some of the sand from beneath the rock overhang, figuring it might have been one of those passable dips we had encountered on the way down, and which had just filled with more sand. No such luck, pretty soon we gave it up and retraced our way back down again.

By now I was seriously considering a major tragedy was in the making–no one even knew we were down here. The flashlights were getting low and I think we all were getting pretty tired. I was. Back up again–third time. We stopped to rest at a point we felt was still on the original path, with me leaning on the right wall, slurring my words, talking with the others who leaned against the opposite wall. I idly mentioned feeling a subsurface current flowing against the back of my boots. The piper immediately crouched to grope beneath the water surface. There was the right turn we had kept missing on the way up!

When we got back to the surface, we lay stretched out on the muddy ground. It was so good to have some sort of future in store again. Definitely an Achievement. Here I am playing the pipes my host sent me after I returned home. Some years ago.